Continuing to Blah Blah Blah ....

As a child during the parents meeting a constant complain from the teachers used to be that I was very talkative. My parents used to always bring this matter up whenever I used to show them the Report card or the exam papers and I slowly escaped to the toilet for the next half an hour avoiding their rhetoric. I had many X's marked against my name by the class monitor on the blackboard for talking excessively and subsequently received lots of punishment from teachers. I still remember writing a sentence " I will not talk in class " 100 times due to a punishment imposed upon me by a teacher in class VIIth.

Years passed on with a feeling that being talkative meant something terribly wrong with a person until I entered the corporate world. When I started meeting people in higher positions I found that they have this tendency to speak for long without a break continuously and the simple reason for this is that most of them are extremely passionate about what they do. You ask a question they will go on and on like amaron batteries until you make some wired excuse of slipping through. Once I happened to ask a close ended question to which the top executive replied " Yes, it is possible. " I was happy to get the answer but then he continued to explain the rationale behind that in a very finicky way which lasted for about 20 minutes . My advise , don't be fooled by their geeky looks because when they open their mouth , you have no escape route and believe me you would not have the strength to reciprocate. Finally don't try to rebut them. Christ help you if you happen to fall in company of a MBA student ( particularly IIMs ) you can be rest assured of a one sided conversation with full of jargons. Once when I asked this person what was the reason that she used so much of jargons ( not that I don't understand :- ) while having a casual conversation pat came the reply that they are used to this and this was the routine. Very similar to this are Entrepreneurs who go on continuously and I just love to watch them talk . As I said earlier all this boils down to passion and you would be able to stretch your talk of 5 minutes to 25 minutes. As I look it most of the successful people ( I repeat most and not all ) generally do this .

Thankfully I have not changed a bit from my versatile childhood days except that nowadays I try to talk a lot of sense ( like my current post :-) which comes very naturally to me. So theres still hope for me to reach the top of the ladder or own a ladder ( I prefer this ) with my blah blah blah .....

6th Pay Commission.

Money has been incorrectly considered as a motivating factor by many whereas in reality it is a demotivating factor atleast in the long run. For instance lets assume that you are being offered a 100 % increase on your current salary ( no one will give u that ) by a rival company. You leave your current company saying that a 100% increase is motivating enough to switch organizations. But when you join the organization you find that your peers in the same position or worse still your juniors earn much more than you . Now would you find the 100% increase from your earlier salary motivating enough to love the work you do? Though very subjective, most you will answer in negative . Did anyone say that money motivates ??

Let me tell you about one uncle, a close family friend who is an I.R.S. and has been serving for the GOI for the past 25 years. He has a daughter who has passed out from a coveted B school and has been working for just over 3 years. However their is a striking difference to the amount earned by the Father and daughter. The father barely manages to earn half the salary of his daughter. Had he been working in a private sector company he would have been atleast a Vice- President by now earning in lakhs which would be 3-7 times his present salary which would be very frustrating and demotivating . At a time when the economy is booming, the purchasing power has increased substantially the employees under the Government ( he may be a clerk or a Cabinet Secretary ) are not being paid a fair remuneration compared to their colleagues in the private sector. Their is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a pay hike for the employees in the government sector is warranted. But then the challenge for the government is to increase the salaries of employees to such a level so as to keep the scorching left happy but at the same time ensure that with the increase they themselves do not land in shambles.

It would be interesting what tricks does Mr. Palaniappan Chidambaram have with him for the upcoming budget in general, though from a pay commission perspective it may be inconse-quential.

Indecent Proposal

What a wonderful Feb 14 , 2006 it was ! It had a lot of emotion which made me think for a change , humour which made made me ROTFLMAO . Na I am not remotely hinting at any gal in my life but instead referring to some wonderful posts made by fellow bloggers. Precisely referring to this, this and this.

After reading Surya's post I felt very nostalgic and the whole scene of my plus 12 college celebrations of Friendship's day back in 2000 came to my mind. At that time I was madly in love with a gal who with her gaze would make my heart melt ( Na she was not your typical hot chick ) . Ha bhai mein phir bi pighal jata tha :-) ! This was the gal who was with me in my college ( different division ) and with me in my tuition Classes . I was the shy kind of guy who did not have the guts to ask the gal for phone number , forget about asking the ultimate question . But then I was in good company of friends all of them who were big flirts in their own right and here I was just wondering on how to have a decent chat after knowing the gal for more than a year. My friends were doing everything possible from their side in ensuring that my path becomes easier.They befriended some of the close friends of this gal and also started teasing this gal by my name. They also eliminated some competition for me by adding a ' Mhatre ' surname . ( I however in a gentleman fashion told the competitors my real name . But by then they had already backed out ). However with all the help and free advises day -night I was still not really able to break the ice.

It was in this backdrop that our college decided to celebrate Friendship 's day . It was a situation tailor made for me . Though very reluctant initially I finally agreed and thought to myself that the d-day had arrived. My dear friends taught me all those rhetoric to get a affirmative answer and carefully planned my approach. They told me that I had to get as many as five different coloured ribbons white, yellow , blue , green and red tied on the gals hand one by one in the same order mentioned above. This they said signified graduating from peace to love , how intellectual ! Once this was done I could go ahead and ask the ultimate question . On the eve of the celebrations I was very confident and a bit anxious on the turn of events the next day.

The next day after a couple of lectures celebrations were on full swing. I had to go to my dream gal's classroom and tie all those bands. With me were my good old three - four friends who were standing by me for any support . I walk upto this gal and she gives me a hint of smile. Their were some others ahead of me and it was actually a complete chaos near her bench. My anxiousness was turning into fear slowly. Then came the grand moment. I shook hands with her , looked eye to eye ( yeah still remember it ) and was about to tie her the first white band when all of a sudden all the bands spilled out of pocket and were down on the floor. More was just to come ! While I was about to tie the first band the bands thread stuck to my wrist watch and there came a long white thread ! Man I was shaking at that time , all my plans had gone bust. While tying the next band may hand was literally shaking and everyone near to the bench could make out that. By this time the whole bunch were laughing and everyone knew what was happening . Somehow the gal held my shivering hand and ..............................................................

just wrote her name on my hand . Nothing else happened at that time. It was a complete rip off to say the least !

Subsequent meetings happened when I gathered a little more courage and at one such meeting left my cycle abandoned on the road. Retrospectively I can just laugh at my foolishness and now it is time for me to sip in some hot chocolate !

( PS. I have been watching a lot of Malyalam movies where their is not a happy ending and so it is in my case . )

Mumbai Striked !

10 people who have nothing much to do in life decide to have an Hartal or a Strike and paralyse the local trains - life support system of the city.If they don't have much work I would rather make them work in my office. Duh ! Sometime back it were done by a bunch of morons in Dombivli station when the city had just recovered from the flood of July 26, 2005 ( I missed a marriage that time ) and then there was the recent strike by the AAI. Last Sunday there was a protest in Mumbra Station ( for god knows what ) and which disrupted the already minimal functioning rail network.

I approached the ticket counter to get an extension on my monthly pass for traveling to Chembur but to my amusement I was denied a ticket . When enquired about the reason I was just told that no trains are plying beyond Kurla. I thought every Sunday the fast tracks are closed but how come access to some station is barred. Then flashed a announcement in Hindi " Kuch Asmajik Tatvo dvara Mumbra Station pe dharna karne karan rail sevayae thap ho gayi hain. Humey aapko hone wali asuvidha ke liye khed hain ." ( I bow to the rail announcers who do a great job )

I looked towards heaven and wondered why me always and patricularly when I am very desperate to make it to the other end. In my undergraduation a very good thing I learnt is to make all the changes and alter the plans in the last minute and just complete adhere to the project deadlines ( JUST IN TIME ) . And so I did not waste much time thinking and hired a auto straight to Thane CheckNaka and then from their to Mulund. From Mulund I and my friend took a Bus to Chembur where we were supposed to go and believe it or not we reached the place on time and carried on our work neatly.

But not everyone would have hired a auto or a bus like me. Many would have stranded inside the train itself. Few others would have missed some weddings, family get togethers, and many other similar things. All this because some assholes who have no other work get together to stage a rail roko. I am not against strikes or protests but then they should be always conducted in a manner which does not affect your neighbor's life anywhichway other than creating awareness. Usage of innovative methods to pass the message must be used similar to a shoe manufacturing unit where the employees in protest just maufactured one pair of the shoe. The recent strike phenomenon reflects a similar pattern of my hometown Kerala wherein it is considered a wonder if there is no strike in a month. But the fugitives who stage these strikes in Kerala work silently in places foreign territories because of the fear of action being taken against them. It is high time that stricter laws in place and the Police department is given the free hand to take immediate action against offenders. Because at the end of the day it reflects a very bad impression on the city or country in general.

For Christ's sake we are living in a globalised and not a parochial world and we cannot let handful of people hold the whole or a section of city paralysed !